"Good-night, Bruce!"
Langdon was awakened some time hours later by a deluge of rain that brought him out of his blankets with a yell to Bruce. They had not put up their tepee, and a moment later he heard Bruce anathematizing their idiocy. The night was as black as a cavern, except when it was broken by lurid flashes of lightning, and the mountains rolled and rumbled with deep thunder.
Disentangling himself from his drenched blanket, Langdon stood up. A glare of lightning revealed Bruce sitting in his blankets, his hair dripping down over his long, lean face, and at sight of him Langdon laughed outright.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "They headed up the creek-bottom, bending over from their saddles to look at every strip of sand they pa.s.sed for tracks. They had not gone a quarter of a mile when Bruce gave a sudden exclamation and stopped."]
"Fine day to-morrow," he taunted, repeating Bruce"s words of a few hours before. "Look how white the snow is on the peaks!"
Whatever Bruce said was drowned in a crash of thunder.
Langdon waited for another lightning flash and then dove for the shelter of a thick balsam. Under this he crouched for five or ten minutes, when the rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The thunder rolled southward, and the lightning went with it. In the darkness he heard Bruce fumbling somewhere near. Then a match was lighted, and he saw his comrade looking at his watch.
"Pretty near three o"clock," he said. "Nice shower, wasn"t it?"
"I rather expected it," replied Langdon carelessly. "You know, Bruce, whenever the snow on the peaks is so white--"
"Shut up--an" let"s get a fire! Good thing we had sense enough to cover our grub with the blankets. Are yo" wet?"
Langdon was wringing the water from his hair. He felt like a drowned rat.
"No. I was under a thick balsam, and prepared for it. When you called my attention to the whiteness of the snow on the peaks I knew--"
"Forget the snow," growled Bruce, and Langdon could hear him breaking off dry pitch-filled twigs under a spruce.
He went to help him, and five minutes later they had a fire going. The light illumined their faces, and each saw that the other was not unhappy.
Bruce was grinning under his sodden hair.
"I was dead asleep when it came," he explained. "An" I thought I"d fallen in a lake. I woke up tryin" to swim."
An early July rain at three o"clock in the morning in the northern British Columbia mountains is not as warm as it might be, and for the greater part of an hour Langdon and Bruce continued to gather fuel and dry their blankets and clothing. It was five o"clock before they had breakfast, and a little after six when they started with their two saddles and single pack up the valley. Bruce had the satisfaction of reminding Langdon that his prediction had come true for a glorious day followed the thunder shower.
Under them the meadows were dripping. The valley purred louder with the music of the swollen streamlets. From the mountain-tops a half of last night"s snow was gone, and to Langdon the flowers seemed taller and more beautiful. The air that drifted through the valley was laden with the sweetness and freshness of the morning, and over and through it all the sun shone in a warm and golden sea.
They headed up the creek-bottom, bending over from their saddles to look at every strip of sand they pa.s.sed for tracks. They had not gone a quarter of a mile when Bruce gave a sudden exclamation, and stopped. He pointed to a round patch of sand in which Thor had left one of his huge footprints.
Langdon dismounted and measured it.
"It"s he!" he cried, and there was a thrill of excitement in his voice.
"Hadn"t we better go on without the horses, Bruce?"
The mountaineer shook his head. But before he voiced an opinion he got down from his horse and scanned the sides of the mountains ahead of them through his long telescope. Langdon used his double-barrelled hunting gla.s.s. They discovered nothing.
"He"s still in the creek-bottom, an" he"s probably three or four miles ahead," said Bruce. "We"ll ride on a couple o" miles an" find a place good for the horses. The gra.s.s an" bushes will be dry then."
It was easy to follow Thor"s course after this, for he had hung close to the creek. Within three or four hundred yards of the great ma.s.s of boulders where the grizzly had come upon the tan-faced cub was a small copse of spruce in the heart of a gra.s.sy dip, and here the hunters stripped and hobbled their horses. Twenty minutes later they had come up cautiously to the soft carpet of sand where Thor and Muskwa had become acquainted. The heavy rain had obliterated the cub"s tiny footprints, but the sand was cut up by the grizzly"s tracks. The packer"s teeth gleamed as he looked at Langdon.
"He ain"t very far," he whispered. "Shouldn"t wonder if he spent the night pretty close an" he"s mooshing on just ahead of us."
He wet a finger and held it above his head to get the wind. He nodded significantly.
"We"d better get up on the slopes," he said.
They made their way around the end of the boulders, holding their guns in readiness, and headed for a small coulee that promised an easy ascent of the first slope. At the mouth of this both paused again. Its bottom was covered with sand, and in this sand were the tracks of another bear. Bruce dropped on his knees.
"It"s another grizzly," said Langdon.
"No, it ain"t; it"s a black," said Bruce. "Jimmy, can"t I ever knock into yo"r head the difference between a black an" a grizzly track? This is the hind foot, an" the heel is round. If it was a grizzly it would be pointed.
An" it"s too broad an" clubby f"r a grizzly, an" the claws are too long f"r the length of the foot. It"s a black as plain as the nose on yo"r face!"
"And going our way," said Langdon. "Come on!" Two hundred yards up the coulee the bear had climbed out on the slope. Langdon and Bruce followed.
In the thick gra.s.s and hard shale of the first crest of the slope the tracks were quickly lost, but the hunters were not much interested in these tracks now. From the height at which they were travelling they had a splendid view below them.
Not once did Bruce take his eyes from the creek bottom. He knew that it was down there they would find the grizzly, and he was interested in nothing else just at present. Langdon, on the other hand, was interested in everything that might be living or moving about them; every ma.s.s of rock and thicket of thorn held possibilities for him, and his eyes were questing the higher ridges and the peaks as well as their immediate trail. It was because of this that he saw something which made him suddenly grip his companion"s arm and pull him down beside him on the ground.
"Look!" he whispered, stretching out an arm.
From his kneeling posture Bruce stared. His eyes fairly popped in amazement. Not more than thirty feet above them was a big rock shaped like a dry-goods box, and protruding from behind the farther side of this rock was the rear half of a bear. It was a black bear, its glossy coat shining in the sunlight. For a full half minute Bruce continued to stare. Then he grinned.
"Asleep--dead asleep! Jimmy--you want to see some fun?"
He put down his gun and drew out his long hunting knife. He chuckled softly as he felt of its keen point.
"If you never saw a bear run yo"r goin" to see one run now, Jimmy! You stay here!"
He began crawling slowly and quietly up the slope toward the rock, while Langdon held his breath in antic.i.p.ation of what was about to happen. Twice Bruce looked back, and he was grinning broadly. There was undoubtedly going to be a very much astonished bear racing for the tops of the Rocky Mountains in another moment or two, and between this thought and the picture of Bruce"s long lank figure snaking its way upward foot by foot the humour of the situation fell upon Langdon. Finally Bruce reached the rock.
The long knife-blade gleamed in the sun; then it shot forward and a half inch of steel buried itself in the bear"s rump. What followed in the next thirty seconds Langdon would never forget. The bear made no movement. Bruce jabbed again. Still there was no movement, and at the second thrust Bruce remained as motionless as the rock against which he was crouching, and his mouth was wide open as he stared down at Langdon.
"Now what the devil do you think of that?" he said, and rose slowly to his feet. "He ain"t asleep--he"s dead!"
Langdon ran up to him, and they went around the end of the rock. Bruce still held the knife in his hand and there was an odd expression in his face--a look that put troubled furrows between his eyes as he stood for a moment without speaking.
"I never see anything like that before," he said, slowly slipping his knife in its sheath. "It"s a she-bear, an" she had cubs--pretty young cubs, too, from the looks o" her."
"She was after a whistler, and undermined the rock," added Langdon.
"Crushed to death, eh, Bruce?"
Bruce nodded.
"I never see anything like it before," he repeated. "I"ve wondered why they didn"t get killed by diggin" under the rocks--but I never see it. Wonder where the cubs are? Poor little devils!"
He was on his knees examining the dead mother"s teats.
"She didn"t have more"n two--mebby one," he said, rising. "About three months old."
"And they"ll starve?"
"If there was only one he probably will. The little cuss had so much milk he didn"t have to forage for himself. Cubs is a good deal like babies--you can wean "em early or you can ha"f grow "em on pap. An" this is what comes of runnin" off an" leavin" your babies alone," moralized Bruce. "If you ever git married, Jimmy, don"t you let yo"r wife do it. Sometimes th"
babies burn up or break their necks!"